The younger daughter just got her permit, so instead of a random alphabetical slice, I thought I’d try a thematic list: Songs with some from of “drive” in the title. I had a bunch. I’m guessing you’ve got a bunch more.

Oh, and she’s doing really well. The braking and turning is getting smoother, and she’s got just about the perfect balance of fear and confidence.

“Drive In/Drive Out,” oh my science, how I love that song. You know how a slice of music can just take you right back to a place in time? That’s one of those songs for me. It wasn’t necessarily a good time in and of itself, but that song, and the entire album Crash was something that I listened to a lot during an extremely liberating time in my life.

I can listen to it at any time of the year, even if it’s -10 and a blizzard outside, and just feel the burning summer sun and smell the sweet Ohio breeze. Love it.

I was going to participate for the first time, but I have very few songs with drive in the title anywhere! Weird.

I will throw out some advice here, to you and to anyone with a teenager learning to drive:

Get them to a proper driving school.

Skip Barber has some great schools specifically for teenage drivers that will do a lot to give them the skills and mindset that will save them from accidents and potentially save their lives.
We have ZERO driver education in this country. High-school driving education is a joke. Dunning Kruger rules the day. It may seem like a lot of money, when ‘I can teach them myself,’ but you can’t – not at the level these people can. Hell, anyone who drives at any age should take a real driver’s ed class on the Skippy level. It might save your life – or someone else’s.

Not exactly recent news, but back in May a study was released that showed two very strong correlations:

1.) ”
When a teenage driver carried at least one passenger age 35 or older, the driver’s risk of death was reduced by 62 percent, and risk of involvement in any police-reported crash was reduced by 46 percent”
2.) ” per mile driven, the risk of death for a 16- or 17-year-old driver increased 44 percent when carrying one passenger younger than 21, when compared to driving with no passengers at all. The risk doubled when carrying two passengers younger than 21 and quadrupled when carrying three or more passengers younger than 21. ”

Those risk increases/decreases are in comparison to driving alone with no passengers.

If I had a teen who was learning to drive, I would let them drive any time both of us were in the car. I would not allow them to drive with any other teenagers in the car, and when they complained, I would tell them why.

I was genuinely surprised I didn’t have “Mona Lisa Overdrive.” I guess I forgot to buy that Juno Reactor album (basically, their music from the Matrix trilogy).

Btw, not that anyone will likely read this, but I’m taking some time off from the forums, other than the musical lists. I’ve been spending way too much time online, to the point that I worry I’m developing an addiction, and following comments on multiple forum threads is a large part of that. It’s not only eating up my time, it’s also been causing me a lot of stress and frankly hurting my ability to properly express myself on forums.

Maybe I’ll be back in a couple of months or something, but for right now I need some recharging time.

A lot of good stuff here. It’s hard to guess what to recommend here, but I think I’ll go with “Number Six Driver”, even though the video isn’t the best presentation of the song. “Number Six Driver” is a good introduction to EFO’s oeuvre, and I’ve always found the line “I can measure my distance by a marathon runner’s nightmare” to be nicely evocative. Second place goes to REM’s “Drive”, not just for the song itself but under the theory that its absence from Fred’s playlist suggests he doesn’t have the Automatic for the People album.